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How To Add Legs To Furniture

5.04.2015

Give your boring old furniture some custom style and learn how to add legs to furniture easily! Attaching feet to your furniture is a great way to update your furniture and give it high end style without breaking the bank! You'll never believe what we used for legs for this DIY furniture project!

Good morning! It's the start of a new week and the beginning of a new month. A month that includes an especially tender holiday for me.

Mother's Day.

What makes this day so special?

Well besides sleeping in...

I usually get breakfast in bed.

Homemade cards (my favorite!) and...

Children that try extra hard to be extra awesome! Becoming a mother has been one of my greatest joys.

And I was trained by the very best...

Meet my mother, Andrea who is the inspiration behind this next furniture project.

Some people call her Andrea but her friends call her, Andi.

There are three things that I'd like share about my mom. The first is boy is she FUN! This lady is easy going, has the best sense of humor, and is usually the first person to laugh at her own mistakes.

Second, this gal has some amazing legs! She's tall and thin and although I didn't inherit her height and somehow got most of the undesired family anomalies, I was blessed with her leg genes. ;)

For that I will be eternally grateful..Thanks, Mom!

And last, I recently had the absolute pleasure of helping my mother perform a total gut job on her 1970's home complete with blue carpet, toll painted borders and yellow formica kitchen countertops.

It was a long year filled with renovations but it was sure was fun to help her pick out her cabinets, flooring, tile and paint colors while spending HER money! ;)

With my mom in mind, I decided to fix up this discarded dresser I found at a thrift store. It had nine drawers and some amazing swirly details.

Here's what I'm calling "The Andi Dresser"....

Disclaimer: While Cece Caldwells sent me paint to complete this labor of love, I supplied the elbow grease, rescued furniture, design concept and opinions within this post! All of which reflect my own point of view, regardless of affiliation! This post may contain affiliate links to products I love and use everyday. This means that I receive a small commission for purchases that are made through these links. You may read our full disclosure for more info.

With my mother's height as the inspiration for this furniture makeover, I decided I wanted to add legs to this piece.

I was in decision mode as to what kind of furniture legs to attach to this dresser when I passed by an aisle at our local Home Depot and happened to glance over at some fence post tops! Fence post tops?!

Could I use those as furniture legs?

Yes, fence post tops! At $5.99 a top, I found myself a deal!

Here's what they looked like: (Only picture them as unfinished wood and unpainted.) If you turned this post around 180 degrees so that the screw points down, you visualize that's the part that would screw into the top of a regular fence post.

But, flip it around and viola!... it becomes a furniture leg.

If you're interested in doing something similar you can find these at your local big box hardware stores where they have fence supplies. They were economical AND mine came with the screws pre-drilled. Bonus!

Take a look at the upper corner of this next picture. When we flipped the dresser onto its back so the underneath was exposed we discovered that there wasn't a structure to securely attach our new legs to. All four corners were like that.

It was hollow with some trim pieces.

Your furniture piece may be configured differently but if you decide to add legs to a furniture piece (and you SHOULD), I'll show you how we fixed our problem when we didn't have existing supports to work with.

To create supports for the legs to attach to, we cut and added 4" x 4" blocks of wood and secured them into place through the outside of the dresser by insetting the screws. We chose 4" blocks because that measurement made the block flush with the bottom of our dresser. Your measurements might be different.

Do you see how we inset the screw holes on the side when we attached the wood blocks? (See below picture) If you inset the screws, then you are able to hide the holes later with some easy peasy wood filler.

Once the wood blocks were set in place, we flipped the dresser onto its top for the ease of workability. We measured where the fence post would sit on the wood block and where the holes for the screws should be drilled.

Once the holes were drilled, we applied Gorilla Wood Glue to the wood block and screwed in the fence post top carefully matching up the edges so that they were flush with the sides.

It was easy!

On a side note... You don't have to paint your legs first. I just opted to because I thought it would be easier in the long run and I'm all about doing things easy! As you read, you'll discover that I had a paint color change and pre-painting these legs was pointless!

Totally up to you, but I think pre-painting the legs is the way to go! You can always do touch ups later but it's so much easier to paint them when you don't have to crouch under the furniture. ;)

But, paint them AFTER you've completed this next step. There's no sense in covering up your lovely paint job with wood filler.

After the legs were secure and the glue had dried, we applied Wood Filler to our seams and the outside screw holes.

Once the wood filler set, we gave it a really good sanding so the finish was nice and smooth and we were ready to paint!

...To white!

With just a few fence post tops and some paint, the AndiDresser was transformed into something beautiful, elegant and stately! She has lovely height, new legs and amazing details that pop!

Carrie is the owner and author of Thirty Eighth Street, a blog dedicated to furniture story telling. Filled with tutorials, tips and lots of furniture before and afters, Thirty Eighth Street was created to encourage and inspire her readers to see the full potential in unloved and unwanted furniture. Carrie's work has been featured at HGTV, The Huffington Post, Hometalk, Annie Sloan, Country Chic Paint, Redbook, General Finishes and has been published in BH&G Magazine. Carrie has been a judge for The Fab Furniture Flippin Contest ™ and is a regular contributor for Country Chic Paint and Pure & Original.

I like how you blended your mother's attributes -- tall and leggy -- with this dresser. It looks beautiful, and your choice of legs works nicely. I saw your link at the Vintage Inspiration Party. Ann Marie @ Iris Abbey www.irisabbey.com

Great transformation! The white looks fabulous and I love that you used your mom for inspiration! thank you so much for sharing your amazing furniture projects @ Dream. Create. Inspire. Link. I hope you will join us tomorrow night @ 8 EST. Take care, Tara

I'm a big fan of this piece. Amazing. Really like the white with black hardware and the look that is not distressed. If you want to be distressed, look at the "before" picture. I am not one who can envision the final look of a project. Some day I might find myself amidst ugly furniture...but not for long. Thanks for the inspiration. I appreciate your talent.

I also have a piece that I want to add legs. However, I am great at copying a look, but to come up with it - nope. My question is how do you know what size legs to add. Is there a "rule" like hanging a picture to be eye height, or personal preference. By the way you do beautiful work, and are an inspiration to me - if she makes it so beautiful, maybe I can too. Thanks.

I don't really have an exact rule to share with you other than to say you want to make sure that they legs you choose are proportional to the piece itself. It's easy to go too small. It's harder to go too big (unless it's height). So if you're on the fence between a few, go with the bigger of the two. Shape and style also matter. If you ever want help choosing, email me some pictures, I'd be happy to help you choose! Good luck! carrie@thirtyeighthstreet.com

I'm in love with this idea and the creation you came up with! I'm considering adding fence post tops as legs to my solid wood hutch but am worried the stubby 6" tall posts may not hold the weight. Do i need to add additional support?